Subject: [http-state] hooks for other specs

From: Julian Reschke <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:42:38 +0200

Hi,

<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpstate-cookie-09#section-5.2>:

    When a user agent receives a Set-Cookie header field in an HTTP
    response, the user agent receives a set-cookie-string consisting of
    the contents of the header field.

What? :-)

I keep being confused when I come across sentences like these in a spec. 
Just to be sure, I also checked with a few colleagues, and it's not just 
me...

As far as I understand, the way this is phrased has to do that the spec 
wants to introduced a named algorithm for "receiving a set-cookie 
string", that then can be referenced from other specs.

This can be confirmed by looking at earlier versions of the spec, such 
as <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abarth-cookie-06#section-5.1>:

    When a user agent receives an Set-Cookie header in an HTTP response,
    the user agent *receives a set-cookie-string* consisting of the value
    of the header.

The asterisks were IMHO removed because the RFC Editor doesn't like 
pseudo-markup like this (for a reason).

I don't believe we can leave the spec as it is right now.

Proposal:

- clarify that the spec contains hooks for other specs to refer to (this 
could go into Section 2)

- make sure the actual definition makes it clear what is being defined

Best regards, Julian

---

From: Adam Barth <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 09:06:43 -0700

I'm happy to use whatever typography is normal in RFCs to define these
hooks.  In W3C specs, we usually use different colors or italics to
indicated defined terms with no inherent meaning.  You can see from
Anne's earlier message that he wasn't able to find the hooks either.

Adam

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 7:42 AM, Julian Reschke <[email-masked]> wrote:
> wants to introduced a named algorithm for "receiving a set-cookie string",
> that then can be referenced from other specs.
>
> This can be confirmed by looking at earlier versions of the spec, such as
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-abarth-cookie-06#section-5.1>:
>
> _______________________________________________
> http-state mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/http-state
>